proprietary.

1. Owned or controlled by a particular person or organization, especially when use or access is restricted.

2. Behaving as though someone or something belongs to you or is under your control.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• proprietary software
• proprietary information

On the page

The sensor required proprietary software that the research team could not modify.

Usage notes

Primary category: economics / business / social science. Forms: Literal ownership sense normally non-gradable; figurative comparative more proprietary and superlative most proprietary when comparison is meaningful. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Commonness: moderately common.